Coda
by tuesday blue
Summary: Another companion collection of one shots birthed from Rush. A present tense account of the engima that is Nicole.


Party Girl

_Another one shot from the Rush collection. This one's dedicated to Run and the wonder that she is. May she also have a very merry (late) Christmas._

* * *

People are not their mistakes. Nicole has to repeat this in her mind often so that she does not forget – does not slip into her nasty old habit of cataloguing people into stereotypes based on how much they screw up without trying to improve themselves. She especially has to try not to forget this fact today, when she stands before a door she swore she'd never open again....and then twists the knob of it anyway.

She's weak when she pulls out the picture she's hidden way at the back of her closet underneath her ugly sweaters that she's received from her two aunts on her mother's side. Those hideous creations of itchy lamb's wool that she keeps because she knows her aunts meant well last Christmas...and the one before...and the one before that. It's still in its frame and he still smiles back at her. This comes as no surprise. She brushes one hand over his smiling face to clean off the dust and to pretend like she's touching him again. She wants to hug the picture and destroy it all at the same time. He is a rare blend of vegetarian intellectual with unbelievable taste in music and a major in political science. Such a pretty boy full of potential, brilliance, smoldering acoustic guitar riffs, and lyrics that replayed for days in her mind.

"_The taste of you lingers on my lips  
__like they left yours seconds ago  
__I starve for you so patiently  
__but you don't care to know..."_

The haiku queen and the lyrical god...it was a beautifully divine match.

For a brief second, her mind wanders backward...back to an instance she'd like to forget. It was the last time they'd spoken, excluding the few cases of contrived, awkward small talk ill started and soon ended at her favourite coffeehouse and in the bookstore around the corner. Their last real conversation.

_She had never been one to shed tears. Yet, that day she started to cry. To cry on the phone with him. He said, "Sometimes you're heartless. I used to believe that it was unintentionally done, yet these days I can't tell."_

_She almost wanted to say that she was sorry. But she had never been one for apologies. So, instead she only said in a quivering, yet controlled voice, "Is that so?"_

"_Unfortunately, it is, Nic. Case in point," he told her. _

_The last thing he said to her was, "I love you" and to which she responded by abruptly hanging up, unable to bear any more untruths from him. What did his voice bring about for her? What did it summon up in her? Only the knowledge of possibly everything she'd ever done wrong with absolute guilt included as a bonus. Those weren't things that would usually make her cry. When they'd started out nine months previous to the last phone call, it felt to both that they'd had forever to go. Yet, forever turned out to be only the "eight month" kind of forever. The end, as all ends usually are, was so sudden and unexpected. Like she closed her eyes for one minute and suddenly everything was falsified and unreal. Mendacity. Mendacity. Mendacity. And then it was over. But she wasn't ready. She wasn't fucking ready. But it was, in fact, her choice. She'd made her bed, and she was going to lie in it if it killed her. _

Her mind progresses forward – back to the here and now, and Nicole finds herself with eyes shut tight, clutching that framed picture as though her life depended on it. She slowly releases her grip and casts it onto the floor. However, her gaze never breaks with it. Finally she tells it, "Mark Meyers, you're a jackass, and I do not like you at all," and shoves it back under the sweaters of ill taste.

To assuage her uneasy mind, she goes about working on a new layout for her website. It's Photoshop and PHP, her favourite blend. The site consists of two components: the informative and a weblisting. Its goal is to promote tolerance, awareness and acceptance among different religions and different lifestyles. She's a liberal. It's all her own, she's done her own research, her own layout, and her own management. It's very diplomatic, very egalitarian, and very Nicole. It occupies her free time and rarely allows her mind to drift to less...pleasant...things.

With a critical eye, she skims over what she has just created. To her dismay, what she sees is a clumsily arranged website rendered in a shade of "missed pretty by one inch" blue. The colour is wrong. The links will not work properly. The design is unbalanced – heavy to the left. Her page is loading much too slowly. She groans. Takes off her glasses and rubs her eyes. She wants to beat her head on her desk, but wonders what good it would do. It's an entertaining picture though, she muses. As she's grinning at the mental image she has of herself repeatedly slamming her head into her keyboard, the phone rings. Nicole glances at the clock and groans again. It is la madre and there is no way in hell that Nicole is answering that mother fucking phone. Yet something in her urges her to...she doesn't know if it's a sudden renewal of respect for her mother or guilt from trying to cop out of her obligations as a daughter. Whatever it is, she saves her unsatisfactory mess and then leans over, stretching her fingers as far as they can reach until she is able to clap the receiver in her grip. "Hello?" she says, strained.

"Nicole?"

"Uh, yes," she responds uncertainly to the voice that is definitely not her mother's. "If you don't mind me asking, who is this?"

"It's Dan. Dan Lowry. We, uh, met at that Halloween party, remember? I was charming, so you gave me your number with a look that said, "I'll give you my number but I don't believe for one second that you're going to call." Remember?"

"Oh yeah. Of course. Dan." Nicole only vaguely remembers. She was far too intoxicated at the time to clearly recall writing down or handing her number to any charming boys, yet his voice sounds warm and attractive. Sweet, even. And she hopes for her own damned sake that she didn't lose her mind that night and his hair is also flaxen in colour. "You're blonde, aren't you?" As she awaits his answer, she hopes against hope that he is. To even say that to him, she had to trust herself a great deal. Nicole knows herself well, and knows that she usually only really pursues blondes. Giving out her number is equivalent to pursuit in her book, so he'd better be blonde.

"Yes, that's me," he finally says.

Nicole doesn't go to many parties. She goes out, yes. With her friends to clubs and bars and various things. Yet as far as drunken frat parties and such things, Nicole doesn't play that way. To her credit, she does remember going to that Halloween party. It was held at the abode of a friend of Lute's. She went because school and work were killing her and she needed to get out...and naturally, because all of her friends were going. She remembers standing in a corner with Audrey and smoking too many cigarettes while Ray in her "Velma Kelly" ensemble danced with almost every decent looking boy in the room. She downed too many Zimas and felt as though she were weightless and dizzy – oh so happy. And, apparently, social. This frightened her somewhat. With the exclusion of her four local close friends and three childhood friends back home, she readily argued that cigarettes were far more dependable than people. As Dan talked, she bit her bottom lip and prayed that she wasn't flagrantly stupid or overly giggly that night.

When they finally hang up the phone, Nicole and her blonde mystery boy have discussed the meaning of life, their political views, the nature of the New York subway system, and somehow, it has been decided he is swinging by her apartment early the next morning to bring her a CD that he swears she just has to hear. Nicole is amazed for a minute that she managed to have a normal conversation with a boy on a phone. Such things surely do not happen. She thought they were only myths. Stories and fairytales put in the minds of naive and stupid little girls to trick them into believing that there is hope for Prince Uncharming. She was wrong, apparently, but pleased that she was.

True to form, she stays awake for most of the night, far past her bedtime, working. She reads over papers and condenses her research. Printing and reprinting edited versions. Her physics book is lying beside her bed, unopened. Damn it. She still has twenty problems to do from Chapter 14, sections 14.6 and 14.7. She'd better get another cup of coffee, she thinks, and drags herself into the kitchen to make one grandiose sized one.

When she awakes to a loud shrill noise the next morning, it is not the unholy sound of her alarm clock. No. It is far worse. It is the phone ringing. She jolts awake and sits up. She'd fallen asleep while doing her wretched physics homework and one of the pages sticks to her cheek as she rises. She bats it away, still not lucid. Eyes ridden with sleep's blurring curse and mind hazy, she is disoriented enough to answer the phone, and immediately regrets it upon answering.

"Nicole, this is your mother," the voice says, eerily chipper for that time of the morning.

"Eh?" is all that Nicole can manage.

"Look, honey, you didn't call me back last night and I got worried."

"I wasss s'posed to calllyou?" Nicole mumbles into the receiver.

"Yes, dear," her mother says. "Remember?" Nicole apparently is not remembering as much as she should these days. She curses herself and her mother continues. "When we were hanging up, I told you to call me back and tell me what you wanted me to bring you next weekend when we came up for a visit. You didn't, and I got worried. What were you doing? Did you go out?"

"I don't know? No, Ma," she says. "I was here. I was studying and working on some stuff and-" She yawns, and that small pause gives her mother enough room to get another sentence or two in.

"Oh. Okay. Well, did you think of anything that you wanted us to bring?"

She furrows her brow. Did she think of anything? Well, did she? Ugh. Of course not. It's seven twenty eight in the morning and not a thought has crossed her mind except that she abhors talking on the phone to her mother. "Well, Mom, you see...no I didn't. But I have an early class. So, I have to get ready so I can go. G'bye Mom." Click. She hangs up the phone directly after she finishes her last word. Believe her, she'd tell anyone when talking about her mother, it is the only way she could have gotten off that phone without a forty five minute, time-wasting conversation. Nicole rubs her burning eyes, the world around her is blurry. Where did she put her glasses? She looks around, and as she does, the clock strikes seven thirty exactly and her alarm clock blasts its ungodly melody of foghorn-like beeps. She starts and hisses at the clock, slamming her fist on the top to turn it off. She's getting out of bed, she promises it.

Her feet hit the floor. _Glasses_, she thinks. "There you are stupid things," she says, finding them on the desk near her computer. She puts them on and for the second time in nine hours, drags herself into the kitchen to make yet another grandiose sized cup of coffee. While she is waiting for the coffee to percolate, she peels and orange and chews on it distractedly. What happened to her last night when she forgot to call her mother? What happened when she forgot about Dan Lowry? She didn't know, but she did know that the forgetting streak must come to a bloody, dead end. Nicole Burleigh never forgot anything. She was not about to start.

She throws on some clothes as she takes varying sips from her mug. In go the contacts. Her teeth and hair are both brushed thoroughly, and she's putting on her last sock as the doorbell rings. "Who the hell is that?" she snarls and reluctantly goes to answer the door. When she opens it, she regrets her previous bad attitude and reluctance. Standing at her door, she sees a blonde boy there. He's neatly attired, beaming, and holding a case of Marlboro Lights. Her favourites. It's Dan, and somehow she's forgotten about him again. Not cute.

"Hey," he says, and then adds, "You look beat." A touch of concern trifles his blue eyes. "Did you go out last night?"

"No," she tells him, refuting that misconception for the second time in a half hour. She does herself proud and remains calm, yet she still feels the urgent need to explain herself and polish away the tarnish that is slowly settling upon her reputation. "I'm not what you would call a party girl or anything. I was up late last night. Working on some.....stuff. Homework and project."

Dan smiles at her and then casts his glance to something over her shoulder. "Did you make that?" he asks her, and lifts his hand to point.

Her eyes follow the line of his extended hand to a painted piece of paper she's tacked up on her bulletin board. "Um, no," she said. "Aside from Photoshop, I have no artistic talent. My friend Audrey paints. She made that for me. It's a birthday card." As Dan inspects is more closely, she again notices the carton of cigarettes he's holding. He knew she smoked? She doesn't remember talking about smoking or even what kind of cigarettes she likes on the phone the previous night. She sighs deeply and under her breath scorns herself. "God damn the forgetting! Damn it to hell," she whispers. Wait. No. She tilts her head to the side and for once, her logical mind kicks into high gear and functions as it was meant to. The Halloween party – yes that was it. She smoked there...she smoked Marlboro Lights there as she chatted with Dan. To her mind, she gives an extra sparkly gold star for performance and mentally pats herself on the back just as Dan turns around and with an utterly alluring smile asks, "Is blue your favourite colour?"

Her fingers are somewhat sticky and smell of mandarin orange. Her homework is still lying across her bed in pieces instead of tucked away in her bag. She isn't certain if she's tied her shoes laces and she still has to swing by the post office before class. Time is ticking by at an alarming rate, yet she's lost all concept of it, and forgets that she even has an early class because she is in her apartment. Talking about the varying depths and intricacies of the colour blue with Dan. And he has brought her cigarettes.

* * *

A/N: Spinoffs are fun. Rush update coming soon. I've just had two beasts to fight lately (Winter, Chapter 2 - collaboration with Ravy and Rush 6), and both chapters are hella hard. 


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